Sunday, 6 April 2014

sunshine on leith

Ohmygosh it has been a long couple of weeks! Moving to Scotland a week and a bit ago has been quite stressful, though the beautiful city of Edinburgh more than makes up for it. As it goes when you happen to be sans work, the days have blended into each other a bit and it sort of feels like one exciting, surreal, architecturally spot-on dream.Fresh off the plane we were so lucky to have a place to stay in Dundee, a little city about an hour and a half north of Edinburgh. Our good friends, a Scottish and Irish amalgamation, have recently bought their own home in Dundee so spent a week staying with them. Not wanting to burden them for too long and darn eager to get rid of the pesky hire car (I sleep with one eye open when we hire a car - I have The Fear of scratches, dents and escaped zoo animals), we knew we had to find a place to live in Edinburgh. We were quite lucky being offered the first place we viewed on Gumtree, a shared apartment in Leith with a Lithuanian pilot and her Scottish boyfriend. I can see Arthur's Seat from my bedroom window so I am happy out!We've spent the last week attending National Insurance Number appointments (like the Australian TFN or Irish PPS) and preparing/going to job interviews, so we took a break from all the important things yesterday and spent the day walking around Edinburgh actually seeing the city. One of my favourite things so far about Edinburgh is that all the museums and galleries are free! FREE! My nerdy self was over the moon discovering this, so yesterday we went to the National Museum of Scotland and saw the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. It was amazing and I spent way too long ooohing and aaahing over the pictures. After that we walked up Calton Hill to see the stunning view of the city. It might just have been that it was a clear day and the weather was above freezing, but I could have spent all day up there.Edinburgh so far is going well. Truth be told I can't wait to start working again because it is hard sticking to a routine when you don't haaaave to be out of bed by 7am, but hopefully this week will bring some more opportunities our way. John's sweet Irish nan is lighting candles for us so I know we'll be fine!